Wonder Stories - Publication History

Publication History

By the end of the 19th century, stories centered on scientific inventions and set in the future, in the tradition of Jules Verne, were appearing regularly in popular fiction magazines. Magazines such as Munsey's Magazine and The Argosy, launched in 1889 and 1896 respectively, carried a few science fiction stories each year. Some upmarket "slicks" such as McClure's, which paid well and were aimed at a more literary audience, also carried scientific stories, but by the early years of the 20th century, science fiction (though it was not yet called that) was appearing more often in the pulp magazines than in the slicks. The first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, was launched in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback at the height of the pulp magazine era. It helped to form science fiction as a separately marketed genre, and by the end of the 1930s a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" had begun, inaugurated by the efforts of John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction. Wonder Stories was launched in the pulp era, not long after Amazing Stories, and lasted through the Golden Age and well into the 1950s.